Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

Figure 34 Frontispiece to Langlois’s Les Danses des Morts
After which spine-tingling introduction Langlois takes his readers on that imaginary walk
through the streets of old Rouen that he himself had taken, making them read the past in the
carvings on the timber houses, enter into the minds and the society, of the house builders. Yet, as
for Langlois, as for Hugo, this is a past that can return only in the imagination. It is cut off
forever by the intervening age of reason, which culminated in Revolution, an irony that suits
Langlois’s sardonic taste.
Le XVIIIe seicle!!! Eh! N’est-il pas déjà tombé dans l’abîme des ages, en y entrainant avec lui ses innombrables
morts et ses evenements immenses. Et nous qui lui survivons en propageant au sein des generations nouvelles son
heureuse incredulité et ses sages desenchantements, nous, enfants gâtés de la raison, soyons positives comme elle, et
laissons le Rouen de Louis XII et de Francois Ier redevenir celui de 1835. [The 18 th century!!! Ugh! Has it not yet
fallen into the abyss of time past, taking with it its countless dead and its great events. And we who survive it to sew
in the breasts of new generations its happy scepticism and its wise disillusionment, we the spoiled children of
reason, let us be positive as it was, let us leave the Rouen of Louis XII and Francois I and return to that of 1835.] 164
In 1835 Langlois had two more years to live. His agonising and lonely death after a long
period of depression added to the legend that grew up around him. His reputation was to resound
for decades. The year of his death however, 1837, saw also the end of Georgian England, the
accession of Victoria and on both sides of the Channel a change of mood. Walter Scott’s
popularity declined after 1835 and the failure of Hugo’s play Les Burgraves in 1843 marked the
164
Langlois, Essai Historique, Philosophique et Pittoresque sur les Danses des Morts, p.16.
153